How does the persistence of earnings change over the life cycle? Do workers at different ages face the same variance of idiosyncratic shocks? This paper proposes a novel specification for residual earnings that allows for an age profile in the persistence and variance of labor income shocks. We...

Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we document a significant and positive association between earnings risk (both permanent and transitory) and the level of earnings across 21 industries. We propose an equilibrium framework to analyze the interplay between earnings...

Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we document a significant and positive association between earnings risk (both permanent and transitory) and the level of earnings across 21 industries. We propose an equilibrium framework to analyze the interplay between earnings...

This paper analyses the level of inequality in Spain and how it evolved over the course of the past crisis and the early stages of the current recovery. To this end, it first introduces the various dimensions of wage, income, consumption and wealth inequality, and studies how they have...

Idiosyncratic labor incomes are typically modeled either by stochastic processes with heterogeneous income profiles (HIPs) or restricted income profiles (RIPs). The HIP assumes that individual labor income grows deterministically at an unobserved rate and contains a persistent but stationary...

We study workers' idiosyncratic earnings risk over the life-cycle using a German administrative data set. Positive and negative earnings shocks both contain a highly persistent component. The variance and average size of positive persistent shocks is decreasing over the life-cycle. The...

This chapter covers recent solutions to aggregation problems in three application areas: consumer demand analysis, consumption growth and wealth, and labor participation and wages. Each area involves treatment of heterogeneity and nonlinearity at the individual level. Three types of...

Using panel data for West Germany and Great Britain, we show that there are striking differences in overtime work and overtime compensation in the two countries in the 1990s. Our estimates reveal that the observed overtime patterns affect both the evolution of the monthly labour earnings...

This paper develops a theoretical model of optimal schooling levels where ability and family background are the central explanatory variables. We derive schooling demand and supply functions based on individual wealth maximization. Using NLSY79 data we stratify our sample into one-year FTE work...

How marriage interacts with men's earnings is an important public policy issue, given debates over programs to directly encourage healthy marriages. This paper generates new findings about the earnings-marriage relationship by estimating the linkages between marriage, work commitment, and wage...